Residents seek shelter as air raid sirens sound in Haifa

Residents in the northern Israeli city of Haifa rushed for cover on Wednesday as air raid sirens sounded and blasts were heard overhead in Israel's third-largest city.

Ballistic missiles arrived just minutes after the alarms first went off, leading to people quickly heading for the nearest shelters.

"I was two streets from here. I heard the bombing, I saw everything. I'm a little scared from the bombing. There were 40 or 50 bombs, one after the other," said a Haifa resident from inside a temporary shelter.

Earlier on Wednesday, militants in Lebanon fired around 40 rockets at northern Israel's Upper Galilee and Haifa Bay areas, injuring at least five people.

The Israeli military stated that some of the projectiles were intercepted by the Israeli Air Force, but acknowledged some others did land in these areas.

Israel's Magen David Adom emergency service reported that rockets or shrapnel from interceptor missiles hit at least two locations in the Krayot, a cluster of suburbs north of Haifa.

Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been exchanging fire along the Lebanese-Israeli border since last October, stoking fears of a wider conflict as the war between Hamas and Israel continues in Gaza.

The central parity rate of the Chinese currency renminbi, or the yuan, strengthened 20 pips to 7.0108 against the U.S. dollar Monday, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System.

In China's spot foreign exchange market, the yuan is allowed to rise or fall by 2 percent from the central parity rate each trading day.

The central parity rate of the yuan against the U.S. dollar is based on a weighted average of prices offered by market makers before the opening of the interbank market each business day.