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BEIJING, Jan 25 (Reuters) - A high-speed Chinese train ran through a group of maintenance workers in the dark, killing 18 and injuring nine in China's worst railway accident in years, state media said on Friday.

The train was travelling from Beijing to the coastal resort city of Qingdao on Wednesday evening when it hit the workers, who were on their way to build new tracks near the city of Anqiu in the eastern province of Shandong.

But they had arrived on the site 20 minutes ahead of schedule, when passing trains were still running at up to 120 km per hour (75 mph), rather than the 45 km per hour maximum for passing through areas under maintenance, state media said.

They violated safety regulations by "using the railway as a shortcut," an official with the railway construction company in charge of the project told Reuters.

State television said the workers had "forcibly" entered the railway perimeter. The official said a fence lock had been smashed.

"It is so unfortunate and so strange that they were walking along the only one of four lines expecting a train at the time," he said.

The stretch of railway line is in a rural area far from stations.

"The injured had been hospitalised and were in a stable condition and the transportation of the railway had resumed after a short suspension," Xinhua news agency cited the Railway Ministry as saying.

No passengers on the train were killed or injured, a ministry official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters. He did not explain why it took two days for the news to come to light.

Trains are packed in China as people head to their home provinces for the Lunar New Year holiday which starts on Feb. 7. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Guo Shipeng; Editing by Nick Macfie and Sanjeev Miglani)

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