SINGAPORE, Oct 9 Reuters The safehaven dollar and Japanese yen edged higher on Monday as violence in the Middle East spooked markets, while a blowout U.S. jobs report gave the greenback a further leg up.

The Israeli shekel tumbled more than 3 to an almost eightyear low of 3.9880 per dollar early in the Asian session, before trimming some of those losses in volatile trade after the Bank of Israel announced it will sell up to 30 billion of foreign currency in the open market to maintain stability.

The shekel was last roughly 1.7 lower at 3.9069 per dollar.

Risk sentiment was fragile after Israeli forces clashed with gunmen from the Palestinian group Hamas over the weekend, hours after the militants launched a surprise attack on Israel in the deadliest day of violence in the country for 50 years.

That kept the Japanese yen a traditional safehaven currency in bid, sending the risksensitive Australian dollar sliding nearly 0.8 to 94.61 yen .

The euro similarly fell roughly 0.4 to 157.45 yen in thinned Asian trade, with Japan closed for a holiday.

Against the dollar, the yen last bought 149.21 .

As you39;d expect, there39;s a lot of uncertainty out there this morning in the markets, said Tony Sycamore, market analyst at IG Australia.

Where some of these riskaversion moves are going to play out in the currency space, the dollar will remain bid… and the yen should start to see some more support coming in, but potentially, that39;s more on the crosses.

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