BAGHDAD — In the past week, Iraqi police have found the bodies of at least 41 men who were either shot in the head or decapitated in a wave of killings in Baghdad and northern Iraq.

The spate of execution-style killings in Iraq has rekindled memories of attacks carried out at the height of the country’s sectarian bloodshed and raised fears of a widespread return to such violence.

Iraqi security officials say these targeted killings have more to do with attempts to fuel instability, and with infighting within the two Muslim sects, than with direct hostility between Shi’a and Sunni communities.

They believe the killings are not directly related. But they warn that such chaos could set off wider sectarian violence, especially when combined with an insurgent bombing campaign led by al Qaeda, which is expected to get worse ahead of parliamentary elections in April next year.

“The phenomenon of unknown bodies of young men who have been beheaded or executed has significantly increased,” said Hakim al-Zamili, a senior lawmaker and member of parliament’s Security and Defense Committee.

Iraqis use the term “unknown bodies” because attackers have removed traces of identity from the corpses such as personal papers or, in some cases, their heads.

Such attacks have been happening on a smaller scale for the past two months, Zamili said.

“We have information that there are many executed people in the morgues of the hospitals in Salahudin, Mosul and Anbar,” he said, naming areas in northern and western Iraq.

Security officials say al Qaeda-linked insurgents may be behind most of the recent killings, but they also suspect Shi’a militia could have been involved in some of them.

Execution-style killings were one of the hallmarks of sectarian violence that peaked in 2006 and 2007. Iraqis used to find dozens of bodies each morning, discarded in public squares and garbage dumps, particularly in the capital.

This year has been one of the most violent in Iraq since that wave of violence which killed tens of thousands. More than 8,000 Iraqis have been killed since the start of 2013, the United Nations said on Sunday.