Europe close: Stocks mostly higher heading into Easter week

European stocks ended mostly higher, while safe-haven assets rallied amid rising geopolitical tensions after the US launched a missile attack on a Syrian airfield, despite a weaker than expected US non-farm payrolls report for March.

Heading into the Easter holiday-shortened week, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index edged 0.13% higher to 381.26, while France's CAC 40 rose 0.27% to 5,135.28 and the Dax was 0.05% lower to 12,225.06.

Meanwhile, crude oil futures were pushed higher on the back of the American strike amid worries about disruptions to supplies from the region, with West Texas Intermediate ended up 1.05% to $52.25 a barrel and Brent crude was 0.74% firmer at $55.30.

Safe haven assets were also in demand as market participants looked for somewhere secure to park their cash, with gold up more than 1%.

The yellow metal rose to a fresh five-month high of $1,269 an ounce following news of the air strike.

Non-farm payrolls in the States increased by 98,000 in March, undershooting the consensus forecast of 174,000 by a very wide margin, amid downwards revisions to the data for January and February.

The unemployment rate on the other hand fell back by two tenths of a percentage point to 4.5% - its lowest register since 2007.

Economists for the most part seemed to brush off the weakness in the NFP figure as mostly a weatehr-induced setback.

"Monetary policy implications of this report should be limited. Nobody anticipates a rate hike for the next meeting, early May, anyway. And ahead of the subsequent meetings, the Fed will get further evidence about the state of the labor market, which should corroborate our view that the true underlying dynamic lies somewhere between the too strong numbers in January and February, and the too weak number in March. We thus continue to expect two further rate hikes in the remainder of this year," said Dr. Harm Bandholz, chief US economist at UniCredit Research following the release of Friday's report.

US President Donald Trump said he ordered the missile strikes after the deadly chemical attack that took place earlier in the week.

Acting as a backdrop, the air strike came during a two-day summit between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, with trade and North Korea's military programme on the agenda.

Earlier, figures from Destatis showed German industrial output rose 2.2% in February from the month before, beating expectations for a 0.3% decline.

On the corporate front, German consumer goods group Henkel edged higher even as it said it will keep looking for acquisitions to boost its business.

French drug maker Sanofi was also on the back foot, retreating 0.75% despite receiving FDA clearance for a smartphone app with an insulin dose calculator.