A dump truck driver who appears to have run a red light smashed into a Palo Alto Unified School District bus carrying elementary school students on Wednesday.

The impact forced the bus to go off the road and collide with a traffic light pole, an electrical box and a fire hydrant before it struck a tree, the California Highway Patrol said. Four El Carmelo Elementary School students and three Fairmeadow Elementary School students ranging from kindergarten to fourth grade were on the bus at the time.

The truck driver behind the wheel of a white Ford F-750 truck, which belongs to Cosmos Roofing Inc., was traveling north on Middlefield Road while the school bus was heading west on Colorado Avenue just before 8 a.m. when the collision occurred, according to the CHP. A preliminary investigation found that the truck driver ran a red light and broadsided the school bus.

A passenger in the Ford F-750 suffered multiple lacerations and was transported to the hospital after the truck veered off to the left and collided with two metal poles located at the driveway entrance to Wells Fargo Bank at 721 Colorado Ave. in the city's Midtown neighborhood, CHP spokesperson Officer Art Montiel said.

One student suffered a small cut to the upper lip and another student was left with a cut above the eye. Both students were treated at the scene, he said.

The truck driver, a 46-year-old man from San Jose, was unlicensed and will be cited, Montiel said. The investigation is still ongoing.