The Israeli Health Ministry is poised for the first time ever to exhume the remains of a child suspected of being linked to the Missing Yemenite Children Affair.

On Monday, Health Ministry officials, acting in accordance with a court order and at the behest of the family, will exhume the remains of a child buried in Petah Tikva’s Segula cemetery.

The grave ostensibly belongs to Uziel Houri, the son of Tunisian immigrants who became sick as an infant, and, according to the official record, died at age one.

Yet government documents list the grave as belonging to an immigrant child from Yemen, fueling suspicions the child was linked to the disappearance of hundreds – or potentially as many as thousands – of young children in the years immediately after the establishment of the State of Israel.

The missing children, mostly from families of Yemenite, North Africa, or Middle Eastern origin, are suspected of having been taken at birth or as infants and put for adoption to wealthier parents – with the birth parents told the child had died suddenly.

Health officials will attempt to establish the identity of the child buried in the grave, including the use of DNA testing.

“Out of a desire to get to the truth and to remove the families’ doubts regarding the identity of their loved ones, the Health Ministry supported the passage of the law [allowed for exhuming remains] and has taken upon itself to handle the execution of the law,” the Health Ministry said in a statement Sunday.

“This is a very sensitive and complex operation, and we are doing our best to ensure that it is carried out in the most dignified way for the family.”