OTTAWA: Fifteen people are dead while 10 others have been injured and taken to hospital after a bus collided with a semi-truck in central Canada.

At a press briefing on Thursday, police said the bus carrying 25 people collided with a semi-truck near the town of Carberry, two hours of drive west of Winnipeg, capital city of Manitoba.

Police said most people on the bus were seniors, Xinhua news agency reported.

In several tweets, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in Manitoba said it was responding to a "very serious... mass causality" collision, and that all of its resources, including its major crime unit, had been deployed to the scene.

A witness told CBC News that he saw a burning vehicle in a ditch just after noon local time.

John Proven described the scene as "shocking". "I have never seen an accident that big," he said.

He said he also saw a semi-trailer truck nearby with a burned front end, and that about 20 police vehicles and eight ambulances were at the scene.