Three people have been killed and up to 30 have been injured after a bus crash in central Sweden on Sunday. 

The bus was carrying 52 students who were en route to a ski resort with seven adults, including the driver.

The accident occurred on a main highway south of Sveg, a small town 430 kilometers northwest of Stockholm.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known, but the road was reportedly icy when the accident occurred at about 7am. Pictures showed the bus lying on its side in a ditch beside the highway.

Rescue services spokesman Peter Nystedt said some 30 others sustained minor injuries.

The father of Stina Almqvist, one of the students on the bus, said he was awakened by a call from his "panic-stricken" daughter.

"She just screamed and screamed," Fredrik Almqvist told the Expressen tabloid. "I can still hear her screams."

Friends of the students from Angskolan high school in Skene gathered at the school earlier today.

A priest from a nearby church in town in the southwest Sweden, Goran Landgren, told reporters at the school that the accident had "deeply upset them all."

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said that the accident "leaves me and the whole country in sorrow."