section_path: History/2018–2022: Resurgence
section_name: 2018–2022: Resurgence
paragraph_text: 2018–2022: Resurgence
  
  In October 2017, more than 500 people were killed by a suicide truck bombing in Mogadishu, including many children, provoking domestic and international outrage. Al-Shabaab did not claim responsibility for the attack but was suspected of involvement. In December 2019, another suicide truck bomb marked the beginning of a series of al-Shabaab attacks on the capital city, which continued into 2022. Al-Shabaab also targeted American military personnel in an attack on a Kenyan base in January 2020, and in July 2022 launched an unusually bold, though short-lived, incursion into Ethiopian territory. By 2020, the group's strategy of semi-territorialism allowed it operate freely in much of rural Somalia, with its primary base in the Jubba River Valley, although air strikes against its leaders continued; and it has recently won military successes against the government. It had also expanded its operations in Puntland, prompting a military offensive by Puntland forces in 2021. As of July 2022, al-Shabaab is generally considered to be "resurgent", a situation partly enabled by a reduction in the number of American air strikes, and possibly motivated by competition with Islamic State in Somalia, which has been conducting its own expansionary campaign.
  
  On 20 July 2022, al-Shabaab launched an invasion into Ethiopia's Somali Region. Taking advantage of the ongoing Tigray War, the goal of the operation was to establish a presence for the group within southern Ethiopia. The incursion began with over a thousand al-Shabaab fighters staging diversionary attacks on four Ethiopian-Somali border towns in order to allow a force of 500 to 800 fighters to penetrate the Ethiopian security zone and advance into the region, who then advanced 150 km into the region. After two weeks of intense clashes and airstrikes, the ENDF and Somali Region security forces began to reassert control. A battalion of around 500 al-Shabaab fighters succeeded in evading the Ethiopian army and reached its main target, the Bale Mountains.