Taylor flees Monrovia as African leaders press for peace
He left Monrovia as the delegation prepared to meet him at his mansion.
They were told that Taylor had travelled to the south-eastern port of Buchanan, where his forces also have been battling rebels.
Taylor's unannounced departure marked his first known travel to a war zone outside the city since the rebel siege began.
The West African envoys said they would stay, regardless.
"We're going to wait until we can sit down and talk to him," said Nana Akufo-Addo, Ghana's foreign minister, and one of a five-member team of top West African government and regional officials left waiting by Taylor.
The delegation was carrying a message from West African heads of state that the first peacekeepers would deploy in Liberia on Monday and that Taylor, an indicted war-crimes suspect blamed for 14 years of conflict in the region, must leave by Thursday.
Just before the West Africans arrived, new shelling hit a crowded neighbourhood of tin-roof homes in Monrovia, slamming into one house and killing four children and five adults, aid workers said. Mortar bombs and heavy gunfire killed at least 11 people, including a pregnant woman, in the capital yesterday.
People scurried for cover as mortar bombs fell around the strategic Old Bridge leading to the heart of Monrovia, where two weeks of bloodshed have killed hundreds of people and left the city starved of food and water.
A correspondent saw nine bodies, one of them decapitated, around a house hit in a mortar attack.
Some of the dead seemed to have been shot.
"The shooting was very heavy and bullets started flying everywhere. The mortar landed and then blew up the place," an aid worker said.
Residents said a mortar bomb crashed into another house, killing a man, a pregnant woman and her unborn child.
A government frontline commander said rebels bent on toppling Taylor attacked loyalist positions but were pushed back. "There was shelling and some people died," he said.
Terrified residents living close to the bridge said fighting continued in the early afternoon.
Officials in Washington said US warships were expected to arrive off Liberia yesterday, but no decision has been made on whether to put any of the 2,300 marines aboard on the ground.
The US has strong historical links with Liberia, which was founded by freed American slaves.
