Belgium authorities were awaiting crucial air support Sunday to help battle the largest wildfire in the country’s modern history, which has been ablaze since Friday.

More than 250 firefighters and emergency personnel worked through the night in the High Fens nature reserve near the German border to stop the spread of the wildfire, which has scorched 3,000 hectares.

Firefighters said they are relying heavily on aircraft Sunday to bring the blaze under control, with reinforcements arriving from several European countries.

Belgian federal police helicopters and Dutch aircraft were already operating Sunday morning, repeatedly collecting water from a nearby lake. Additional helicopters from the Czech Republic and Sweden were expected to join later in the day after Belgium activated the EU’s Civil Protection Mechanism. Germany and Norway could also provide aerial support, European Commissioner for preparedness and crisis management, Hadja Lahbib, told AFP.

“Thank you to our European partners for the assistance they are providing,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever wrote on X.

Europe has been battling wildfires throughout a summer marked by repeated heatwaves and drought, with blazes forcing thousands to evacuate in Croatia, France, Germany, Greece and Spain. Firefighters in France on Sunday continued battling several wildfires, including one that was nearing the Belgian border.

Belgium’s wildfires are tearing through fragile peatlands and pine forests in the High Fens, which were devastated by wildfires during a similar period of heat and drought in 1911. It is Belgium’s largest wildfire since then. No homes have been damaged so far, but residents of two villages have been evacuated and authorities say the fire remains out of control.

Twelve people were killed and dozens more were injured when a bus transporting Catholic pilgrims back to Poland veered off a Hungarian motorway early Sunday.

Police said the bus overturned after coming off the M3 motorway, which connects Hungary’s capital Budapest with the northeastern city of Nyíregyháza, at around 1:00 a.m. Sunday. Officers have reported that the driver may have fallen asleep at the wheel.

The tour group was returning from Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a popular pilgrimage site for Catholics where multiple visions of the Virgin Mary have been reported.

“I spoke on the phone with the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. I expressed my condolences to the Polish people for the terrible night bus accident,” said Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Facebook.

Fifty-seven passengers and two drivers were on the bus, according to Hungarian news agency MTI reports. Emergency services had attempted to lift the rear axle of the 24-ton bus to remove the people trapped underneath before cranes arrived to lift the entire vehicle, the MTI report added.

Hungarian Interior Minister Gábor Pósfai confirmed that the death toll stood at 12, with several of the injured in serious condition, while the driver was taken into custody.

A Spanish F-18 fighter jet on a NATO air-policing mission Sunday shot down a drone that had illegally entered Romanian airspace.

The drone was detected by radar about 24 kilometers north of the eastern city of Galați after entering Romania from Moldova. Having established radar contact, the fighter jet was authorized to shoot it down at 5:01 a.m. Authorities said debris from the destroyed aircraft had fallen in an uninhabited area between two villages.

Martin O’Donnell, spokesperson for NATO operation headquarters, said additional details regarding Sunday’s incident remained under investigation but that the drone “appears to be Russian.”

“The Ministry of National Defence is constantly monitoring the situation and informs in real time the allied structures about such events,” the ministry added in a statement.

It is the fourth drone shot down by NATO over Romania since the beginning of 2026. In July, Romanian F-16s downed three Russian drones that breached the country’s airspace — the first such interceptions after dozens of incursions since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In May, a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building in Galați, injuring two people.

Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine traded strikes over the weekend. Russian forces launched missile and drone attacks on Kyiv early Sunday, sparking fires in at least two districts and injuring three people, according to the city’s military administration.

Ukrainian drones also struck the Moscow region overnight in what the regional governor Andrei Vorobyov described as one of the largest attacks to target the area, killing an 83-year-old man.