Firefighters worked through the night to battle Belgium’s biggest wildfire on record, which by yesterday morning had burned 3,000 hectares of land and was heading towards the German border, local authorities said.

The blaze in the High Fens, a nature reserve in the east of the country, has been burning since Friday and firefighters ​from across Belgium and neighbouring Germany and Luxembourg have sought to contain ​it, as have the army and farmers. Hundreds of villagers were under evacuation orders.

Responders were focused on the front line of the fire moving towards Germany and were hopeful that cooler, more humid weather would support efforts to contain it, Stephanie Ernoux, spokesperson for the administration of the Belgian region of Wallonia, told Reuters.

The fire is more than double the size of a blaze in 2011 that burned close to 1,400 hectares, data from ​the European Forest Fire Information System showed.