The accident happened on Wednesday night along tracks near the city of Anqiu in Shandong province, the State Administration of Work Safety said in a notice on its web site.

The cause of the accident was not given and there was no explanation for the delay in reporting it.

However, the official Xinhua News Agency said the workers, from the China Railway 16th Group, had arrived at the site ahead of the hour at which trains were supposed to approach with caution.

An official reached by phone at the Shandong provincial work safety bureau said the national safety supervision bureau and national railway ministry had formed a joint team to investigate the accident. "We haven't had any updates so far," said the official, who refused to give his name as is common among Chinese bureaucrats.

An official at the publicity department of the China Railway 16th Group hung up after saying only: "We have nothing to tell you."

The phone at the publicity department of the national work safety bureau rang unanswered.

According to Xinhua, track work was scheduled to start at 10pm and trains were to slow their speed to 28mph starting from 9pm. But the workers entered the work area at 8:40 pm and soon afterward were hit by the speeding train, it said.

Xinhua said the injured were in a hospital in stable condition. The high-speed passenger train was traveling from Beijing to the port city of Qingdao in Shandong.

See also:

Rule violation blamed for east China traffic accident that kills 18

Xinhua: 2008-01-26

WEIFANG, Shandong Province -- Violation of operation rules was blamed for causing the traffic accident in east China's Shandong Province that killed 18 people, said a local official on Saturday.

According to rules, only full-time employees were allowed to work on railways. However, the about 100 people relocating the tracks were all migrant workers without safety trainings and their team had no operation license, said Chen Gong, head of the Jinan Railway Bureau of Shandong.

Chen said that according to plan, railway track adjustment was carried out from 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday to 1:30 a.m. on Thursday. In the period of time, trains passing by were required to slow down their speed.

The workers, however, entered the work site ahead of schedule.

The accident happened at 8:48 p.m., when a high-speed train ran across the work site in Anqiu, killing 18 workers and injuring 9 others.

The China Railway 16th Group Co. Ltd. in charge of the project should be fully responsible for the accident and relevant persons punished, Chen said.

The injured are in stable condition and out of danger, and two of them have been discharged from hospital, according to Chen.

See also:

Train ploughs into China rail workers, killing 18: government

AFP: 26 January 2008

BEIJING — A high-speed train ploughed into a group of railway workers in eastern China this week, killing 18 people, the government said Friday, in the latest blot on the country's abysmal safety record.

Nine others were injured in the accident on Wednesday night in Shandong province, which occurred as workers were relocating a stretch of track, the state work safety administration said in a statement on its website.

The train had been travelling at 120 kilometres (74 miles) per hour through the city of Weifang at the time of the accident, the state Xinhua news agency said.

State television said a nightly speed limit for trains had been imposed in the area to allow work on the track. However labourers had started their work just before the limit went into effect, leading to the tragedy.

The workers were employees of China Railway 16th Group, a state-owned construction company that does contract work for the national Railway Ministry.

It was not immediately clear why it took so long for the government to reveal the tragedy.

Chinese businesses and local-level officials often try to cover up industrial and other accidents to avoid punishment.

However, a spokesman for China Railway 16th Group told AFP by phone the company was having difficulty obtaining further information, blaming bad weather at the accident scene.

"We don't have more information than the (government) on the accident at present. It's snowing heavily in the area and traffic and telecommunications are very bad. We have not received an update from the scene," he said.

The spokesman declined to give his name.

Calls to Shandong provincial railway authorities and the national railway ministry went unanswered. Three area hospitals told AFP by phone they had received no patients from the accident.

The rail line connects Beijing with the port of Qingdao, which will host the sailing competition of the Beijing Olympics in August.

The accident occurred just as the annual Lunar New Year holiday travel rush gained pace. Millions of Chinese were expected to take buses, trains and planes to gather with their families for China's biggest annual holiday.

The Railway Ministry has forecast a record 178.6 million passengers would travel by rail for the holiday, which officially begins in early February.

State television said the accident did not affect rail traffic.

China's government last week said 101,480 people died in 2007 in more than 500,000 transportation, industrial and other accidents.

It said the number of rail accident deaths fell by 2,595, or 45 percent, but did not provide an absolute figure or otherwise break down the data. However, the figures suggest the number of train deaths last year was about 3,170.

Labour groups say industrial accidents are vastly under-reported due to cover-ups.

In one of the worst rail accidents in recent times, 126 people were killed and more than 200 injured when two trains collided in central China's Hunan province in 1997.