Seventeen people were injured when a bus carrying teenagers to a football match collided with a car in a Polish village today, officials said.

Four of the casualties were seriously hurt but none was in a life-threatening condition. Some were taken to hospital by helicopter.

"In such a tragic-looking accident, in this entire tragedy, the fact that everyone survived is huge luck," Leszek Blaszczyk, the leader of a local firefighting unit, told the all-news station TVN24.

The crash happened in the early afternoon in Kromolin Stary, a village near the central city of Lodz.

The bus was carrying three adults and 16 youths between the ages of 16 and 18, fire department spokesman Arkadiusz Makowski said.

The teenagers were on their way to play in a football match, police spokesman Jacek Kozlowski said, adding that all of the injured were passengers from the bus. The driver of the Toyota Yaris, the only person in the car, was not hurt.

On Tuesday, a bus carrying Belgian schoolchildren crashed in Switzerland, killing 28 people, including 22 children. The crash happened in a tunnel as the group was returning home after a ski trip to the Alps.