Imran Khan escapes from detention

Lahore: Leading Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan escaped from his home in Lahore on Sunday hours after police put him under house arrest following the imposition of emergency rule by President Pervez Musharraf.

Khan told CNN early Sunday that police surrounded his house in Lahore and informed him that he was under house arrest.

"He was detained along with eight supporters at the house. The supporters are at home but he has slipped away," a close relative told Reuters. "Police are still outside the house."

"It was all expected," Khan said of Musharraf's address, before the former cricket star was placed under house arrest. "We expected General Musharraf to say that militancy and terrorism was on the increase and that he had no choice.

"But we didn't expect him to come up with the judiciary, blaming the judiciary that it wasn't playing ball with him," Khan said.

"Everyone knew that the general was in trouble with the Supreme Court, which was not going to endorse him as a military chief to fight the presidential election, and that's really where the problem started for him. And so therefore he's imposed this emergency."