KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bomb attack on Friday at a supermarket in the capital frequented by foreigners. They said the strike was aimed at killing the head of the private security company Blackwater.

Employees of Blackwater, now called Xe Services, were in the area at the time, but neither they nor anyone they were protecting were killed or wounded, said Harry W. Clark, an adviser to the company. Instead the attack killed at least nine other people, including five foreign women, four of them Filipinos, said Afghan and Western officials, and at least one child.

While the attack failed in its objective, it indicated a disconcerting level of Taliban surveillance even in Kabul, as well as the degree to which the company and other foreign security firms have become the object of Afghan animosity.

The company has contracts in Afghanistan with the American government and has come to symbolize the heavily armed mercenary armies that work for foreigners, but particularly for Americans, in war zones.