Venezuela accused the United States of having violated its sovereign airspace on Sunday, saying that a U.S. Coast Guard intelligence aircraft that departed from the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao on Friday overflew its territory later that day.

"Forty-eight hours ago, an intelligence plane for the U.S. Coast Guard took off from the air base in Curaçao," Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said in a televised broadcast on Sunday, according to Reuters. "The most serious part is that this plane, a Dash 8 ... violated airspace, our airspace," alleging the aircraft came close the western Los Monjes archipelago on the Caribbean coast.

But a spokesman for the U.S. military told Agence France-Presse that no American crew had been operating in the area at that time. "As far as we know, there was no U.S. Coast Guard that was flying through Venezuelan airspace," Chief Warrant Officer Chad Saylor contended. "If there is an aircraft, it's not ours."

It is worth noting that the U.S. Coast Guard does not operate any Bombardier Dash 8 aircraft, according to their website. However, the U.S. Air Force utilizes the commercial plane's militarized version, called the E-9A Widget, in the Gulf of Mexico.

Nevertheless, Caracas insisted the incursion happened and the Dash 8 -- a relatively small, twin-engined turboprop plane -- was accompanied by a C-17 Globemaster, a large military transport aircraft that Padrino López said is used for the "strategic and rapid troop transport," according to Telesur.

Other U.S. intelligence planes, meanwhile, had also approached Venezuelan airspace in the past few days, and American ships were operating close to Venezuelan waters in the Gulf of Mexico, the defense minister told the network.

"Coincidentally, all of this equipment is very close to the Atlantic coast, close to Venezuelan territory, ahead of the parliamentary elections" scheduled for Dec. 6, Padrino López noted.

"This deserves our attention," the minister, who holds the rank of general-in-chief of the Venezuelan Army, added, according to Reuters. "Taking into account the precedents that exist, especially in the year 2002," he said in reference to what the administration of President Nicolás Maduro has described as a U.S.-endorsed coup that briefly deposed Maduro's predecessor, Hugo Chávez.