Fighting has resumed in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, as West African mediators arrive to discuss plans for President Charles Taylor to step down and go into exile. Several shells landed in the diplomatic area of Mamba Point and rebels and government fighters have exchanged fire around two bridges which lead to the city centre. At least nine people, including four children, were killed when shells landed on tin-roofed shacks near the Old Bridge. Monrovia had been relatively calm since a Nigerian-led military fact-finding team arrived on Wednesday night to prepare for the arrival of West African peacekeepers - now expected on Monday. The United States, meanwhile, has said it will ask the United Nations to vote in the next 24 hours on creating a multi-national peacekeeping force for Liberia, French news agency AFP quoted an unnamed US official as saying. In Monrovia, the secretary general of the regional grouping Ecowas, Mohammed ibn Chambas, and three West African ministers are preparing to meet President Taylor to ensure he will leave, as promised, for Nigeria three days after the first contingent of troops arrives. The BBC's Barnaby Philips in Monrovia says crowds of people who had emerged from shelter to seek water, food and medicine ran for cover as the shells landed. The total force of 3,250 West African peacekeeping soldiers is expected to deploy within three weeks. **'Just go'*** Monrovia residents have welcomed the announcement that Ecowas troops were on their way. "Most of us are tired of war. We want a reunion with our people. Every Liberian wants to interact with his family," one Monrovian told Reuters news agency. The main rebel group - Liberian United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) - on Friday renewed their call for the Liberian president to honour his promise to stand down. "Mr Taylor must go. Mr Taylor cannot be a positive factor in any new dispensation in Liberia," Kabineh Janeh, who heads the Lurd delegation at the Accra peace talks told the BBC's World Today programme. Nigeria has offered asylum to President Taylor - who faces war crimes charges in the United Nations-backed tribunal for Sierra Leone. Mr Chambas has indicated that Charles Taylor is unlikely to be tried soon. "He is not going to Sierra Leone, he is going to Nigeria," Mr Chambas told the BBC. Liberian minister Samuel Jackson said that Mr Taylor wanted a formal handover of power, preferably to his Vice-President Moses Blah. Ecowas announced on 4 July it would send the mainly Nigerian troops to Liberia but the deployment has been hampered by continuing fighting and haggling over who will bear the cost of the mission. **Misery*** Washington repeated on Thursday that it would back the West African peacekeeping effort. The US had "put up 10 US million dollars that will go in the form of a contract for logistics support," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. Conditions in Monrovia are said to be appalling, with increasing numbers of children facing malnourishment as food and water supplies run dangerously low. International aid groups say they can do little to help the 1.3 million people trapped in the city. "We have stocks, and our problem is that we just cannot... distribute them to the needy population," Gregory Blamoh, head of the World Food Programme mission in Monrovia, told the BBC. "To be able to distribute this food there had to be cessation to the current fighting," he added. Rebels control the capital's food stocks in the port area and have been accused by the government of looting - though they say they have simply been handing out food to the hungry. Another rebel group captured Liberia's second city, Buchanan, earlier this week, cutting off the last remaining route for food imports to get to government-held parts of the capital. **PHOTO CAPTION*** Fighters of Liberian President Charles Taylor shoot at rebel forces in Monrovia July 31, 2003. (Luc Gnago/Reuters)