DUBAI, July 26 (Reuters) - An al Qaeda-linked group has claimed responsibility for an attack on a police station that killed two people and injured 18 others in Yemen's Hadramout province.

The attack on Friday was in retaliation for the killing of al Qaeda militants in Yemen, the Yemen Soldiers Brigades said in a statement on a Web site often used by al Qaeda.

In Friday's attack, a car tried to enter the police complex but exploded after it was stopped at the gate, killing the attacker and a police guard.

Earlier this year, gunmen killed two Belgian tourists in the Hadramout region in an attack the government said was believed to have been the work of al Qaeda.

Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden, is grappling with a campaign by al Qaeda militants, who have said they were behind several attacks in recent months, including a shelling near the U.S. embassy and a mortar attack on a refinery in Aden.

The government has also been fighting Shi'ite rebels in the northern province of Saada since 2004, although President Ali Abdullah Saleh said earlier this month that battle had ended. (Reporting by Summer Said; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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