US STOCKS-Wall St edges higher as industrial stocks attempt recovery

* Alibaba up on report of China listing plans

* Dollar General, Sears gain after Q4 results

* Alexion's rare blood disorder drug succeeds in late-stagestudy

* Dow up 0.37 pct, S&P 0.12 pct, Nasdaq off 0.03 pct(Updates to open)

By Sruthi Shankar

March 15 (Reuters) - Wall Street's main indexes edged higheron Thursday as industrial stocks gained following three days oflosses due to fears of trade war between China and the UnitedStates.

The S&P industrial index was up 0.15 percent,helped by gains in Caterpillar and General Electric. Shares of planemaker Boeing pared early losses totrade down 0.8 percent.

The markets found support from economic data that showed thenumber of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell lastweek, pointing to strength in labor market.

A more than expected rise in U.S. import prices in Februaryindicated a steady pick up in inflation.

At 10:09 a.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Averagerose 0.37 percent to 24,848.55. The S&P 500 gained 0.12percent to 2,752.75 and the Nasdaq Composite was downjust 0.03 percent at 7,494.93.

The indexes fell on Wednesday after U.S. President DonaldTrump sought to impose tariffs up to $60 billion on Chineseimports, while pressing for a cut in China's trade surplus withthe United States by $100 billion.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said historyshowed trade wars are in nobody's interests, but that Chinawould protect its legitimate rights if "something happens wedon't want to see".

"The problem is this type of rhetoric creates uncertaintiesand cap the markets," said Peter Cardillo, chief marketeconomist at First Standard Financial in New York. "We'reprobably going to continue to slip in and out of the minuscolumn for most of the day, we might be able to have amid-session with upward bias."

Trump's decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminumimports as well as on solar panels and washing machines hasalready sparked threats of retaliation from some trade partners.

Shares in aircraft maker Boeing have shed 8.8 percentsince March 1, when Trump announced his plans to impose tariffs.The stock was down another 1 percent in morning trading.

Major industrial stocks have been under pressure from theprotectionist policies, which are likely to firm up with Trumpreplacing free trade proponent Gary Cohn with conservativecommentator Larry Kudlow to lead the National Economic Council.

Alibaba jumped nearly 3 percent on report that theChinese e-commerce giant was planning to list in China.

Shares of Dollar General rose 5.8 percent after thediscount retailer's quarterly same-store sales beat estimates,and those of Sears Holdings Corp gained 5 percent afterthe retailer reported smaller-than-expected drop in same-storesales.

Alexion Pharmaceuticals rose 8.45 percent after thecompany's experimental drug to treat patients with a rare blooddisorder met the main goal in a late-stage study.

Advancing issues outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,459to 1,030. On the Nasdaq, 1,238 issues rose and 1,113 fell.(Reporting by Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by ArunKoyyur)