NEW YORK, April 16 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. dollar index declined on Monday as investors continued to monitor the geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against six major peers, was down 0.40 percent at 89.439 in late trading.

The United States, along with its allies Britain and France, launched a missile attack against Syrian military positions early Saturday morning, causing a flurry of mixed reactions across the Middle East.

Analysts said fears of an escalating conflict in Syria eased for the moment, which was the reason why investors reduced safe-haven holdings of the greenback and bought riskier assets such as stocks.

On the economic front, advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for March came in at 494.6 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 0.6 percent from the previous month and beating market consensus, the Commerce Department announced Monday.

Meanwhile, business activity grew at a solid clip in New York State, according to firms responding to the April 2018 Empire State Manufacturing Survey.

The headline general business conditions index, at 15.8, remained firmly in positive territory, although its seven-point decline from its March level pointed to a somewhat slower pace of growth.

In late New York trading, the euro climbed to 1.2377 dollars from 1.2334 dollars in the previous session, and the British pound increased to 1.4328 dollars from 1.4243 U.S. dollars in the previous session. The Australian dollar was up to 0.7778 dollar from 0.7761 dollar.

The U.S. dollar bought 107.09 Japanese yen, lower than 107.46 Japanese yen of the previous session. The U.S. dollar was down to 0.9599 Swiss franc from 0.9622 Swiss franc, and it declined to 1.2571 Canadian dollars from 1.2614 Canadian dollars. Enditem