Italian state radio said there were several injured in the accident on the A14 autostrada near Forlì, a town in the Emilia-Romagna region in northeastern Italy.
It said the rest of those aboard were safely evacuated, including the woman’s two young children.
The bus landed on its side on a grassy slope just beyond a highway guardrail and near a farm field.
Firefighters used two cranes in an operation to set the bus upright and remove it.
Italy’s interior ministry said the bus had set out from Ukraine and was heading south to Pescara, an Adriatic port city, when it overturned.
The passengers were taken to a nearby police barracks for initial assistance, and would later resume their journey, the ministry said.
Some 35,000 Ukrainians refugees who fled war in their homeland have entered Italy, most of them through its northeastern border with Slovenia.
Italy’s interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, told Corriere della Sera on Friday that most of the people were staying with family and friends.
She said 283 properties seized from the mafia had been identified to accommodate people over the longer term.
Refugees will be given access to healthcare, children will be schooled and adults given permits to work. Italy is managing the process as part of the EU’s temporary protection directive, an instrument drawn up in 2001 and activated this month, which allows member states to give immediate protection to Ukrainian refugees.
- With AAP, ANSA
