At least 30 others were also wounded in the incident, which took place in eastern Laghman province’s capital, Mehtarlam, Afghanistan’s interior ministry said on Monday.

The condition of the governor, Rahmatullah Yarmal, was not immediately known and officials would not confirm local reports that he was slightly wounded in the bombing. Yarmal escaped unharmed, a provincial police spokesperson said, Al Jazeera reported.

Interior ministry spokesman Tariq Arian said four of Yarmal’s bodyguards had been killed in the bombing. He said the wounded included 28 civilians and two other guards.

No group has claimed responsibility for the incident. Both the Taliban and Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) are active in the area.

The Taliban group has carried out assassinations of high-profile Afghan officials recently, while both groups attack government representatives, national security and defense personnel as well as civilians.

According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), at least 1,282 civilians were killed and 2,176 others wounded in the first six months of this year.

Violence in Afghanistan has not abated even as representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban are holding intra-Afghan negotiations in Qatar, where the Taliban have a political office.

The negotiations are meant to end the country’s decades-long long war, following a peace deal between the United States and the Taliban, signed in February in Qatar’s capital, Doha.

The talks that started last month in Doha aim at reaching an agreement on a reduction of violence and a possible new power-sharing agreement in Afghanistan.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is travelling to Qatar on Monday for a bilateral meeting with Qatari leaders but will not hold a meeting with Taliban officials even as peace talks are under way in Doha, officials said.

“Several meetings are planned to discuss efforts for deepening Afghanistan-Qatar ties and mutual cooperation in various areas,” a close aide to Ghani told Reuters news agency, adding that Ghani will also meet the Afghan representatives who are holding talks with Taliban.

“But it is clear that Ghani will not meet the Taliban officials as there has been no reduction of violence and they continue to kill innocent civilians,” a senior western diplomat overseeing the ongoing peace process told Reuters.

So far, there has been no progress in the Doha negotiations as the warring Afghan sides have become bogged down on processes and procedures, diplomatic sources said.

Special police forces deployed to the scene of the attack and in a swift operation secured the building, killing all four gunmen.

The attackers were armed with grenades and automatic rifles, police said. They launched the attack by opening fire at the entrance gate of the Pakistan Stock Exchange in the southern port city, the country’s financial center.

Heavily armed Special Forces quickly surrounded the building located in the heart of Karachi’s financial district, where the Pakistan State Bank is located, as well as the headquarters of several national and international financial institutions.

Local television stations broadcast images of police in full body armor surrounding the building but still staying outside the high-walled compound of the stock exchange.

Rizwan Ahmend, a police officer at the scene, said that after opening fire, the gunmen entered the stock exchange grounds. He said that after the attack was over, food supplies were found on the bodies of the gunmen, indicating they may have planned a long siege, which police quickly thwarted.

Inside the stock exchange, broker Yaqub Memon told AP that he and others were huddled inside their offices while the attack was underway. As the firing ended and the gunmen were killed, police gathered all the employees and brokers in a single room while security forces went floor by floor to ensure that no explosives had been left behind, he said.

Shazia Jehan, a police spokesman, said the bomb disposal team was also called to the stock exchange to clear the building of any explosive devices.

Later, the Baluchistan Liberation Army claimed responsibility for the attack. The group has been waging an urgency for years, demanding independence for Pakistan’s gas-rich southwestern Baluchistan province, which borders the southern Sindh province, where Karachi is the provincial capital.

The Karachi stock exchange is Pakistan’s largest and oldest stock exchange, incorporated today with the exchanges in Islamabad and Lahore.

The Baluchistan Liberation Army, which Pakistan says has found safe across the border in Afghanistan, has carried out a series of attacks in Karachi in recent years, including an attack on the Chinese Consulate that killed two people.

The Arabian Sea port of Gwadar is located in Baluchistan and is part of China’s multi-billion-dollar one-road project linking south and Central Asia to China. The Baluchistan militant group has opposed the one-road project including a highway connecting the Gwadar port to the Chinese border.