Fears that a deadly shooting at a Jewish market in Jersey City was an anti-Semitic attack mounted on Wednesday as authorities recounted how a man and woman deliberately pulled up to the place in a stolen rental van with at least one rifle and got out firing.

A day after the gunbattle and standoff that left six people dead — the two killers, a police officer and three people who had been inside the store — state and federal law enforcement officials warned they have not established the motive for the attack.

But Mayor Steve Fulop said surveillance video of the attackers made it clear they targeted the kosher market, and he pronounced the bloodshed a hate crime against Jews, as did New York’s mayor and governor.

Also, investigators believe the two dead attackers — who were thought to be a couple — identified themselves in the past as Black Hebrew Israelites, a movement whose members have been known to rail against whites and Jews, according to a law enforcement official who was briefed on the matter but was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Britons who have endured three years of wrangling over their country’s messy divorce from the European Union cast ballots Thursday in an election billed as a way out of the Brexit stalemate and one of the deeply divided country’s most important votes since World War II.

The contest pits Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who says he will take Britain out of the EU by Jan. 31, against opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, who promises another referendum on Brexit.
All 650 seats in the House of Commons are up for grabs in the election, which is being held more than two years ahead of schedule.

The prime minister called early elections in hopes of breaking a logjam in Parliament that stalled approval of his Brexit agreement in October. Johnson didn’t have a majority in the last Parliament and was stymied once he lost the support of the Democratic Unionist Party because of concerns about how Northern Ireland would be treated under his deal with the EU.

Opinion polls have consistently showed the Conservative Party in the lead, but recent surveys suggest the margin may have narrowed in the final days of campaigning. While Labour is unlikely to win an outright majority, smaller opposition parties hope to win enough seats so they can team up to block Johnson’s Brexit plans.

St. Thomas women’s basketball lost to Augsburg 69-65 Wednesday at Schoenecker arena. The game went into overtime, during which the Auggies pulled ahead for the win. They remain unbeaten in MIAC play.

St. Thomas has a break until the team travels to Wisconsin Dells on Dec. 29 to play UW-Stevens Point for a 3 p.m. game.

Maddie Peters can be reached at pete9542@stthomas.edu.