VIENNA, August 5 (RIA Novosti) - Police officers fatally shot a 14-year-old boy and injured his 16-year-old accomplice after the pair broke into a supermarket in a northeast Austrian town, national media reported.

The Austrian Times said the boys entered a Merkur supermarket in Krems an der Donau in the early hours of Wednesday wearing masks, and set off the security alarm. Police then arrived at the scene.

The paper quoted Friedrich Kutschera, head of the local public prosecutor's office, as saying the boys had hidden in a recess by the meat storage room, and that when police came into "sudden contact" with them in complete darkness, the officers opened fire.

The boys, who were "well-known" to local police, were carrying a screwdriver and garden hoe, meaning they were "technically" armed, he said.

However, Kutschera said the details of the incident remain unclear, and that he did not know whether the policemen had been attacked by the boys before they fired the shots.

The officers have yet to be questioned over the incident.