A woman has died and nine others have been injured after a car driven by an 89-year-old ploughed into a cafe in Sydney’s north-west on Friday morning.

The group of 10 women were sitting outside Cafe Si:Zac on Malton Road in North Epping about 10am on Friday, when a car drove through a garden and into their table.

Police said the group had just finished the morning school drop-off at North Epping Public School, and were meeting to catch up over coffee.

NSW Ambulance superintendent Steve Vaughan said the scene outside the cafe was “absolutely frantic” and paramedics had done all they could.

“The scene was absolutely frantic for emergency services – there was carnage everywhere when we arrived,” Mr Vaughan said.

A 40-year-old woman was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital in a critical condition. She died soon after.

Nine others were treated at the scene, with four of them taken to hospital in a stable condition.

A woman is consoled outside the Epping cafe. Photo: ABC

Detective Inspector Mark Christie said the situation was “just awful”.

“It was obviously a horrendous and chaotic scene,” he told the ABC.

“This appears to be quite a close-knit community, it’s just a small local cafe at a local shopping centre. I imagine a lot of people would know each other.”

Inspector Christie said the 89-year-old driver had been taken to Ryde Hospital for mandatory testing and would be interviewed later.

“It appears he has pulled into the parking spot and then there’s been some sort of collision after that. But we don’t know the circumstances yet, they’re still under investigation,” he said.

“It’s a very tragic set of circumstances that have occurred here today.”

The NSW Police crash investigation unit remained on the scene on Friday afternoon as investigations continued.

-with AAP