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By Dhanya Skariachan and Jim Finkle NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) – Target Corp shares made strong gains after it reassured investors that customers were beginning to return to its U.S. stores, suggesting that the impact of a massive data breach may not be as severe as some had feared. The third-largest U.S. retailer said on Wednesday that customer traffic had started to improve this year after falling significantly at the end of the holidays when news of the cyber attack and theft of payment card data spooked shoppers. Chief Financial Officer John Mulligan said on a conference call he expected first-quarter sales at its established U.S. stores to be flat to down 2 percent and so far in February, they have been running within that range and nearly flat to last year. Target shares, which had fallen 11 percent since news of the breach broke before Wednesday, were up 6.8 percent at $60.37, their highest level for almost six weeks.